Musings on the Duty of Life from an Old Chair
by LSMunch
Summary: To see a good man at his worst is to see him after he's shot another man. It doesn't matter if that man was as guilty as George Strait is country. The thought that he killed someone, that he actually pulled the trigger, tears into him, leaving him doubtfu


Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: I have to be honest, I thought hard about adding this as another chapter for Deeper Than Life, but in the end, decided against. So if things sound a bit familiar, or if you're wondering why it's a stand alone, well, the truth is I thought that it wouldn't flow with the first two chapters. If you believe differently after reading it, that's nice, but I've made my decision concerning the placement of this story. On that note, enjoy.

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To see a good man at his worst is to see him after he's shot another man. It doesn't matter if that man was as guilty as George Strait is country. The thought that he killed someone, that he actually pulled the trigger, tears into him, leaving him doubtful and angry and in despair. The fact that with something a bit more than a twitch of his finger, and something less than actual detectable movement, he took a man's life. Whisked it away. And now, coupled with this horrible sense of duty (at least, that's what they tell him it is, his duty), he has to go relive it God only knows how many times, to prove that not only was it his duty, but that it was a clean shooting. That he was reasonably provoked and it was not some sort of act played out in the name of revenge, of hatred, of just plain anger.

All things considered, it wasn't really the hardest part of the whole ordeal. If you asked him, it was seeing his partner lying in a hospital bed, the only consolation being that hey, he's alive and the guy who had put him in this white washed hell was going six feet under for much longer than his partner would ever be in the hospital. Won't even have to go through the exhausting ordeal of a trial, nor would they have to go through, much later of course, the even more exhausting process of going through the appeals filed in his name. It was clean, cleaner than a baby's bottom.

As he slouched down in the chair in his partner's room, he wondered over that saying. Saying that a baby's bottom was clean was, at least in his opinion, mostly wrong. How clean could it be after sitting in shit for however long it takes the parents to change the damn diaper? Exactly. But, shaking his head, he figured that that wasn't the point of his mental tangent at all. It wasn't really that he wondered over the origins of such a silly saying, though he had, at some point or another. He thought that perhaps... perhaps he was simply distracting himself. Leading himself down pointless, unrelated alleyways of thought so that he could delay reliving the whole ordeal until the latest possible hour. Truth be told, and it wasn't as shocking a truth as some he could tell you, he would rather go back in time and stop the ordeal, even if it meant going through a trial. Even if it meant maybe having him back out on the streets in fifteen, twenty years.

By then, though, it wouldn't be his problem. He would long be retired and possibly even dead, so whoever happened to be in Special Victims would have to deal with it. And who knew? Maybe twenty years in the future, the way technology was moving, he wouldn't even be able to rape. Maybe they would change the laws so that any convicted rapist would be immediately castrated. Either way, it still wouldn't be his problem, and it wouldn't be his partner's either, or anyone else in the unit for that matter. If they were there twenty years from today, then something would be seriously wrong. Being in a unit like Homicide for twenty or so years is one thing, but to be in the Sex Crimes unit for twenty or so years was insane. Beyond what he would normally call crazy and straight into 'this guy needs to be institutionalized.' Of course, he could picture Benson there for that long, though he seriously doubted if Stabler would make it, mentally that is. Those psych evaluations in his fifth year had gotten him in some pretty deep shit and only because of Cragen did he come out in one piece.

Personally, he had the brain, the heart, and, in the beginning, he had the soul. But even now, he was lacking in the latter by... well, by enough for him to notice. He tried to close himself off to cases, like they all tried, but then you're just a cop in a halfway decent suit asking prying questions. There was a certain balance to being a detective in Special Victims, and he had found it soon after joining, but there was always that case. That case came around far too often for his tastes, but at least it reminded him that he was human. He was sure this was to become one of those cases, for different reasons, yes, but one nonetheless. He had begged Cragen to let Olivia take him around to the different victims' residences and let him be the one to tell them that the man who had raped them was dead. Nearly every announcement and ended with the woman hugging him, and him hugging back, unable to say much else, or do much else.

That was over now, though when his brain threatened to send him down Memory Lane, or Memory Alley as he had taken to calling it of late, he tried to remember the faces of those women, so thankful, tears in their eyes and their hugs. That was what he strained to remember each time, their arms wrapped around him, saying 'thank you' more times than he could keep track of. It was human contact and for some reason, it seemed stronger than any human contact he had ever received. It was stronger than a painful blow to the stomach. It was stronger than any sexual encounter. It was stronger than his mother's embrace, or the long forgotten embrace of his father. It was something he wished that he could keep forever, but knew that it might last a week, two if he was lucky, and then it would fade from immediate memory, and constant scrutiny, into some deep recess of his brain, to be remembered years later, or perhaps not at all.

His head began to dip, sitting in that worn chair that dozens, probably hundreds of others had sat in, pondering their own existence and how easy it was to take it all away. Contemplating, more seriously than they had done so in their previous encounters with grave injury or death, or both, the real meaning of life, and consequently, death. What it was to be dead, or to be alive. Perhaps the journey after death, whether it be to Heaven or Hell, or maybe back to Earth as another being, the journey depending on the faith. He had convinced himself long ago that there was no God, though with the number of times he had cursed that God he didn't believe in, one might say that he was in denial, or simply hadn't found what God really meant, so therefore told himself that God must not exist. Whatever he believed, he had always held a secret hope, or maybe it was belief (he had never been able to distinguish between the two on this particular subject), that there was indeed a Heaven. Sometimes he caught himself dreaming about a higher place where people he loved and who had long since passed, resided, waiting for him to join them, to be reunited after years of separation. A higher place where his father waited so that he could forgive him and apologize for any wrong he might have committed that had pushed his father over the edge. Where his grandparents waited to see the fine man the grandson whom they had never met had turned into. Where friends waited to shake his hand, maybe embrace as they met again and later would reminisce about times long past.

Maybe the people who had occupied this chair before him had thought of none of this. No revelations about life, no promises to live better, no questions of existence. Maybe they had simply sat there, staring at whoever had occupied the bed for them. Maybe they were alone, or with a spouse, or someone else entirely. Maybe they cursed and ranted, maybe they cried for hours upon hours as they sat in the chair. He would never know what they had done, but for some reason, he found himself caring about what they others had gone through. What personal hells they had traveled through until they came out on the other side. Or maybe they never came out. Maybe they were eternally trapped in Hell, lost in the heat and flames, the Devil tricking them at every corner.

Those who had vanquished the fire, where were they now? Did they leave this room happy, or did they leave it never again to see the person lying in bed, at least, not until the funeral. Did they lead happy lives after leaving, or did they wallow endlessly in despair and sorrow? Did they turn into activists, or leaders of support groups? Did they deal with the pain alone, maybe their only company a bottle of hard liquor? Did they find God after a life of running away from him?

These questions and more chased each other around his brain, searching for answers, but only catching whichever question preceded it. Somehow, through the hailstorm of queries that, for some inexplicable reason, interested him far more than he had imagined they would, he nodded off into the kind of sleep that neither felt restful, nor did it leave you more exhausted upon waking. It was the kind of sleep that wasn't really sleep, it was dozing, a nap of sorts. Where you could hear the going-ons around you, but couldn't respond to them, no matter how urgent they seemed. He remained in this state, somewhere between rest and work, for a while, the exact time escaping him, as he hadn't looked at the clock since arriving, and didn't look when he left to go home, to his apartment, to try to fall into actual sleep, but really all he did was stare at a dark ceiling, or sometimes, a mute television which cast a bluish glow over him, sitting on the couch, waiting for sleep, and sometimes something bigger.


End file.
